Don Nickles

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I want to give a little different vantage point on some of these issues, and then maybe other colleagues will wish to speak. I have heard kind of a continual part of the debate offered by our colleagues in opposition to this resolution that this is a terrible budget resolution. They say it is bad, worse, evil, preposterous, and absurd. Wait a minute. At least we have a budget. Frankly, budgets are not easy. How much money are we going to spend, and how much are we going to tax? You always have a lot of people who want to spend more, maybe tax less, maybe tax more. I have heard a lot of comments that maybe we should be taxing a lot more. In the budget resolution, we assume the tax cuts we passed in 2001 would be continued in years 2011, 2012, and 2013. They would sunset at the end of 2010. I guess my colleague on the other side would like to have those tax cuts made tax increases in the years 2011, 2012, and 2013. That is about half of the tax cut that is in this bill. We need to do that. We need to address those tax cuts sometime between now and 2010. I doubt it is going to happen this year. If it does--I guess a bill could be offered and, if it is, it is debatable. I doubt that will be part of the tax bill that will be proposed under the reconciliation procedure. In the President's proposed reconciliation growth package, he would like to have that happen quickly so we can get the economy moving. The economy is not moving very quickly. Some people presupposed that they knew exactly what was going to be in the tax bill. We tell the Finance Committee to cut up to $350 billion in the Senate. The House is $550 billion. We go to conference. Most people count votes. I count votes around here. I think I know where the votes are going to be. I know Chairman Grassley pretty well. I doubt we will come back from conference with something we cannot pass in the Senate. We will make that decision probably 5 weeks from now, not today. I hope we do things to grow the economy. The economy is going down. It needs help. I will mention to our colleagues that our colleagues had a stimulus or growth package. Theirs was almost all spending; 75 percent was spending, with very little tax relief. I guess their idea of a growth package is to grow government. Our idea is, wait a minute, let's contain the growth of Government and have some incentive to grow the economy. Historically, in the tax arena--I happened to be elected in 1980, so I go back to that point. In 1980, the Federal Government took in $517 billion, and the maximum personal tax rate per individual was 70 percent. Ronald Reagan was elected President, and 8 years later the maximum tax rate was 28 percent. If you listen to the dialog we just had, you would think revenues would have fallen. We reduced tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent. That happened over the first several years of the Reagan administration. In 1990, total revenues to the Federal Government almost doubled, from $517 billion to over a trillion dollars. So we cut tax rates dramatically. But guess what. Revenues went up. Then I looked back a little closer. Well, President Bush increased the rate from 28 percent to 31 percent in 1990. When President Clinton was elected in 1992, he raised the rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. I have heard discussion about all these ``massive'' tax cuts for the wealthy and benefits to the wealthy. So far, the wealthy, the higher income tax brackets, are reduced a great big 1 percentage point, from 39.6 to 38.6. That is all that happened. Evidently, they say that is the reason we have this enormous deficit, which is absurd. What do we do on the lower income? We took lower income rates that were 15 percent and made those 10 percent and made that retroactive. Then we passed a $500 per child tax credit. That is law. Now it is $600. So we have done a lot of things for lower income, to make them basically not pay Federal income tax, some of which was retroactive, or pay a lot lower rate. I keep hearing all this class warfare and that these deficits are caused by the tax cut, and some people don't like tax cuts and they want to have tax increases, I guess, in the outyears. But I don't think that will help the economy. Some of us want to help the economy. I looked back and, historically, we have done some things in this body, with bipartisan support, that helped the economy. We reduced capital gains rates in 1997 over the objection of the Clinton administration. They eventually signed the bill. We reduced the rate from 28 to 27 percent and it helped create and foment a lot of growth. If you look at total growth in revenues in the last several years, in 1998, 1999, and 2000, revenues exploded to the Federal Government--I think in part because we cut capital gains rates. So we can cut rates on occasion and it will help the economy. I am absolutely convinced that it had a great deal of economic stimulus when we cut the rates in 1997 and revenues exploded to the Federal Government. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, revenues have declined a lot, mostly because the stock market has declined a lot. So people talk about, wait a minute, we expected $5.6 trillion surpluses over the next 10 years. That was estimated by CBO. They were way wrong because the stock market had already started crashing. NASDAQ, which was exploding in the late nineties, declined by 50 percent between March of 2000 and December of 2000. CBO missed it. They didn't know what that would mean as far as projections. CBO did not forecast the terrorist attack on 9/11 and the disastrous impact that had on the economy and what that has caused in outlays. I wanted to make a couple of those points. We need to grow the economy and we have a stimulus package that I believe will pass the Senate--and probably a comparable figure will pass the conference. It is a little bit more than our colleagues on the Democrat side wanted, except it is mostly on the tax side, not the spending side. The other criticism is, wait a minute, this budget is so terrible. Well, at least it is a budget. It is critically important that we pass it. Last year, we didn't even have a budget on the floor of the Senate. One passed through the Budget Committee; my compliments to the chairman for that, but we didn't have a chance to even vote on the floor of the Senate. I think people can be pretty critical, but I think we need to be a little more reserved. It is important that we pass a budget. I urge our colleagues to be mindful, if we do not pass a budget, one example would be: One could come up on a bill next week, and the bill might be a small authorization bill. Someone can offer an amendment to it and say: Let's spend $1 trillion on a new program, maybe it is prescription drugs or some other type of program that sounds really good. Let's spend hundreds of millions of dollars on education. Sounds good. Let's spend hundreds of millions of dollars--we could do all those things, and if we do not pass this budget today, there would be no 60-vote point of order. Spending would be running rampant. We would be totally out of control. We would have no caps on appropriated caps and no limit on the $2.2 trillion we are spending today, and there is no limit on the demand for Federal spending. It could get out of hand very easily. The only limitation we would have would be the potential threat of a Presidential veto. We need to govern better than that, and we need to show some discipline. If we remember those 51 votes when we passed the budget resolution, there were countless amendments, almost all of which on the Democrat side were: Let's grow spending; let's increase spending. Deficits are not caused just on the revenue side, they are caused by spending more than we take in. I wanted to make those points in response to our friends and colleagues on the other side. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I take issue with our colleagues. I regret the decision they made. But that is not the way this resolution reads. It may have been the way we were looking at having it a couple days ago, but because of some changes that were made, this resolution reconciles both committees to $550 billion, both Houses to $550 billion. It also has additional language that says the Senate will be limited to $350 billion, both out of committee and on the floor. The chairman of the Finance Committee said he would not report, he would not sign a conference report that was greater than $350 billion. You can take the word of the chairman of the Finance Committee. If he says it is not going to be more than $350 billion, it is not going to be more than $350 billion. But to say we are starting something different, if the resolution was drafted correctly and it said $550 billion for both Houses, it did have limitations on the Senate. We have the right to put limitations. We put instructions to various bodies, either the House and/or the Senate, and various committees. That is what a Senate resolution does. I just want to make sure people understand both the commitment our colleague from Iowa made and also that the resolution--and it was not done haphazardly. It was not done with malice or trying to distort the budget process. We were trying to pass a budget in both the House and the Senate. That is what we are going to do. We are going to have a budget. We did not have a budget last year. We are going to have a budget this year. We are going to have a budget that will have caps on discretionary spending and points of order against entitlements. It will be able to keep people from offering entitlements on any little bill that comes down that costs billions of dollars and acting as if it did not cost anything. We are going to have budget enforcement. We are going to have fiscal discipline. We are going to have a reconciliation package that will be reported out of the Senate Finance Committee on the floor of the Senate, and I believe out of the conference report, at $350 billion. I will also say, I heard my colleagues say: Well, there is really $1.2 trillion. Mr. President, $600 billion and some of that is for the last 3 years of the reconciliation period--the years 2011, 2012, and 2013. That will be to extend present law. If we do not extend present law, you are going to have people who are paying 10 percent, who will be paying 15 percent. You are going to have people who are paying 25 percent who will have to go back up to 28 percent. You will have an increase or reinstatement of the marriage penalty. You will have people who were receiving a $1,000 tax credit per child who will only get a $500 tax credit per child. I just mention these. Everybody keeps talking about these fabulous tax cuts for the wealthy. The highest income tax bracket has been reduced a great big 1 percent. It has gone from 39.6 percent to 38.6 percent. Hopefully, eventually it will be at 35 percent. How high is 35 percent? I might remind my colleagues, in 1990, the maximum rate was 31 percent. So even after all of these enormous personal income tax cuts proposed by President Bush, the rate is going to be 35 percent, which is still about 13 percent--or maybe higher than that--well, the old rate was 31 percent. So you are still about 15 percent higher than it was under President Clinton. I just mention, with all these rate reductions--I have been in the Senate not nearly as long as Senator Byrd, but when I came to the Senate, the maximum personal income tax rate was 70 percent. In my first 8 years in the Senate, it was reduced to 28 percent--a pretty significant reduction. Incidentally, Federal revenues in that 10-year period of time, between 1980 and 1990, doubled. So even though we reduced personal income tax rates dramatically, total revenues to the Federal Government rose dramatically--doubled--in that timeframe. So it can happen. We reduced capital gains rates in 1997 from 28 percent to 20 percent, and revenues rose, and rose dramatically, because we cut tax rates. President Bush is now proposing additional tax cuts to stimulate the economy. The chairman of the Finance Committee said the reconciliation package would be $350 billion. Colleagues on the other side offered tax bills and spending bills--mostly spending--that was $140 billion. I guess that was OK but this is not OK. We are looking at an economy that is $11 trillion per year. We are looking at total revenues to the Federal Government over this same period of time of $28 trillion. We are trying to move the economy by having a slight reduction of $350 billion. The House would say $550 billion. That is hard to do. Some of us think it should be more, but we also know we have to count votes. We also know we have to pass a budget. That is our objective, to pass a budget and to get the biggest growth package we can. That has been my objective for a long time. I think it would be very foolhardy to say: Well, we can only get half a growth package; therefore, we will not have a budget. I think that would be a mistake. We need to have a budget. We need to have a growth package. I just tell my colleagues as well that there are still opportunities to do additional tax cuts outside of reconciliation. I encourage that. I was very close to recommending we not have reconciliation and just do a tax cut, period, the old-fashioned way, without the expedited procedure, Senator Byrd, because I believe we can pass one. I think we should pass one. It would be amendable and debatable. We could do it, and we would help the economy. I hope we will, in addition to what we do on reconciliation. I don't think you can stimulate the economy as big as this economy is. I don't think you can do enough with $350 billion. I agree with our President. It may well be we will have to do some inside of reconciliation, and we will have to do some outside of reconciliation. Fine. I would imagine the House can pass a tax bill, and I hope and look forward to taking it up in the Senate. Yes, there will be unlimited debate and unlimited amendments. Fine. Let's take it up. Let's vote. Let's find out, do we really want to grow the economy. I hope our colleague, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, will work with the chairman to make that happen. I yield the floor.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, today I want to speak on the nomination of my good friend Ross Swimmer to be Special Trustee for American Indians. Back in 1994 Congress passed the American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act, which created the position of Special Trustee for American Indians. This position was created to address years of trust fund mismanagement. Special Trustee is a very challenging responsibility not to mention a thankless job. The President could not have picked a better person for this job. Because of Ross's extensive background in Indian law, banking, and finance, I believe that Ross Swimmer can begin to resolve this issue. I have had the pleasure of knowing, respecting, and working with Ross for more than 22 years. He has served Indian country in both the public and private sectors where he has served in numerous leadership capacities. For 10 years, Ross was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, the second largest Indian tribe in the United States. He served 3 years as Assistant Secretary at the Department of Interior, where he managed a $1.5 billion budget; 15,000 employees, and the oversight and management of policy concerning Indian affairs. Ross was president of the First National Bank in Tahlequah and chairman of the First State Bank in Hulbert, OK. He was president of a multimillion-dollar manufacturing company, owned by the Cherokee Nation, which is involved in the aerospace, defense, and telecommunications industries. Ross's legal experience includes General Counsel to the Cherokee Nation, associate and partner in the Oklahoma City firm of Hanson, Fisher, Tumilty, Peterson and Tompkins. Because of Ross's background with Indian law, he established the Indian law division for the law firm of Hall, Estill, Hardwick, Gable, Golden and Nelson. Ross had the distinction of serving as cochairman of the Presidential Commission on Reservation Economies; chairman of the Energy Resources Tribes; and chairman of the White House Conference on Indian Education. He was also named Outstanding American Indian Leader in 1985 and was inducted into the Tulsa Historical Society's Hall of Fame. I am delighted to be here to recommend my friend Ross Swimmer, to be Special Trustee for American Indians. I have confidence in Ross that he will work with the Indian community toward resolving the issues surrounding the Indian trust. As you can see by Ross's career, he has the dedication, experience, and qualifications as well as the understanding of Indian law necessary to address this complex, monumental task.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. I compliment both my colleagues from Iowa and Montana for bringing up this bill. Amendment No. 527 (Purpose: To exclude 25 percent of gain on sales or exchanges of land or water interests to any nonprofit entity for any charitable purpose) Madam President, this bill has a lot of good provisions in it. It has two provisions of which I question the value. I decided to do one amendment. One of the ones I question is, how much good does the above-line deduction do? If you are an individual, you have to donate $500, and you get a $250 deduction. So if you are in the 25-percent tax bracket, that means you get to save $62. And we add a lot of complexity to the Tax Code in the process. So I question the value of that. There are several other provisions in the bill that are good-- donations from IRAs to charities. The purpose of the bill is to increase donations to charities. I compliment the thrust of that. I compliment the President for trying to enact it. I am disappointed this bill does not do more for allowing charitable and/or religious groups to be eligible to participate in Federal programs. That is not in the bill. I am not faulting anybody. I compliment Senator Santorum because he worked tirelessly to get this bill forward. And I, as a legislator, am willing to take half a loaf. I think the Senator from Pennsylvania has about half of his original bill. I compliment him. He has been tenacious. I also compliment my colleague, Senator Lieberman, because he is a cosponsor of the bill. I worked with him on other legislation, including the religious liberty, freedom bill that we cosponsored some time ago. One of the provisions I am trying to amend right now is a provision that says you will have a 25-percent reduction in capital gains tax if you sell property for land conservation or sell to an organization that qualifies for land conservation. I question the wisdom of doing that. I say, if we are going to have a 25-percent reduction in capital gains tax for charitable purposes, make it for all charities. I happen to be a big fan of Nature Conservancy. They have a big facility in my State, with a lot of land, a big buffalo farm or ranch. I helped create that. The Nature Conservancy gets support from lots of corporations all across the country and my State as well. I support that. But what I question is, if we want to help charities, let's help all charities, so if people want to sell land to the Red Cross, they would get a 25-percent reduction as well, or if they want to sell land to a church--and the church may want to build a parking lot or build a bigger church on that land--let's give them the 25-percent reduction. Why should we say: Well, you are going to get a lower tax rate only if you sell to the charity we choose. That is land conservation? I question the wisdom of that. I do not like trying to micromanage, in the Tax Code, how people are going to spend their money. So I would encourage our colleagues, let's help all charities. I do not think you can defend saying: Well, I think it is fine to donate land to the Nature Conservancy or to the Sierra Club or to the Land Trust Alliance or a lot of little groups that are going to be created as a result of this--you don't donate the land; you sell the land--you can donate your land to anybody in the country--but if you want to sell your land, you can sell it to this group, and you are going to get a 25-percent reduction in your capital gains tax. So we would rather give you that if you sell it to the Nature Conservancy but not sell it to the First Baptist Church in rural Iowa. To me, that does not make sense. Or if you want to help the Red Cross--and the Red Cross has a nice facility in Oklahoma, thanks to the Presiding Officer--and they need land, and if a farmer wants to sell that land--they could not afford to donate it, but they wanted to sell it--why would we say: You can only sell it for land conservation, and we will give you a 25- percent reduction in your tax bill. But if you want to sell it to the Red Cross, or if you want to sell it to a church, or if you want to sell it to a children's hospital, no, we are sorry, you are out of luck. Congress decided that charity does not deserve the same tax benefits as land conservation. I disagree. I say, if we are going to give a lower capital gains tax rate, and this would be 15 percent--frankly, I think we should do it for all Americans, but if we are going to do it for one charity or two or three charities, let's do it for all charities. So that is the essence of my amendment. If we are going to have a lower capital gains tax rate on some charities, let's make it available for all charities. We have offsets in this amendment. It does not increase the deficit. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, is the amendment pending?

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I apologize. I send the amendment to the desk and thank my colleagues for their cooperation. I thought the amendment was pending. I apologize to my colleagues.

Mr. NICKLES. Will the Senator yield first? I am not sure we used all of our time.

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to conclude shortly. Correct me if I am wrong, but I was thinking the vote was at 12:30, or are we trying to move it up?

Mr. NICKLES. If the Senator wants to ask consent to move to table the amendment and have the vote commence at 12:30, I am happy to do that. Usually, when you move to table, you conclude the debate.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, parliamentary inquiry: How much time remains on the amendment?

Mr. NICKLES. I am happy to yield.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague and friend from Idaho. He makes a very good point. Western States have a lot of public land and not a lot of private land. This amendment says if you are going to sell land to a charity that deals with conservation, you get a 25 percent lower capital gains tax than if you sell to any other charity. My amendment would say if you sell to any charity, you will get a reduced capital gains tax. I mentioned the Nature Conservancy. They are big in my State. They bought one of the biggest ranches--a buffalo ranch--in Oklahoma. It is in the tall grass prairie. I love it. I helped make that happen. The Nature Conservancy is a big group. I don't know how great their assets are, but I guess it is in the millions of dollars--lots of land and lots of millions of dollars. If you sell to that group, you get a 25 percent reduction in your capital gains tax. I don't think they need it, compared to a church in Oklahoma, maybe in a rural area, which might want to build or expand. But if you want to sell to that church, you have to pay a 25 percent higher tax than if you sell it to a conservancy group, or the Sierra Club, that wants to build a conservancy or other groups that might want to say: Hey, you get a lower deal; sell it to us. Let's encourage charitable contributions, but let's also encourage sales to charitable organizations. If we are going to do it for one charitable organization, let's do it for all charitable organizations. That is the essence of my amendment. We have paid for it. It is offset. I urge my colleagues to support it. If we are going to encourage charitable sales, let's do it for all of them, not just conservation groups. I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to table. I yield the remainder of my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, Parliamentary inquiry: How much time remains?

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, for the information of our colleagues, we are making progress a little slower today than we would like. But yesterday we had 23 rollcall votes. We had 13 voice votes. So we disposed of a lot of amendments, a lot of resolutions yesterday. We only have a few remaining for today. I thank a couple of my colleagues, particularly Senator Warner, Senator Durbin, and Senator Landrieu, because they have been able to work out a couple of amendments, probably saving us two or three rollcall votes. So I appreciate their cooperation. Shortly we will be accepting a couple of other amendments that I believe will be offered by the Senator from California and the Senator from Michigan. So we are making progress and we will make our 4 o'clock final vote. I just wanted to mention that to our colleagues. We will shortly be voting on the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts, dealing with AIDS.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I thank our colleague from California. We have no objection to her sense-of-the-Senate amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. I ask unanimous consent this vote be limited to 10 minutes.

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. NICKLES

Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, for the information of our colleagues, we are making good progress. We only have a few amendments left. To give staff a chance to work out a couple of amendments--I thank my colleagues for working together with us on the amendments--I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess until 1:40.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I call up amendment No. 403, offered by our colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I encourage our colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. NICKLES. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.